A particularly important, but non-limiting, field of application of the present invention is that of the management of stores of drugs and other pharmaceutical or medical products, with particular reference to the selective distribution of these products within hospital establishments in accordance with requirements for the administration of the products to individual patients. There is an ever greater need to provide automatic systems and stores in which medical products are stored in individual doses and from which these products can be withdrawn, grouped together in various ways, on the basis of instructions or orders which reflect the specific prescriptions for the use of medical products and for the administration of drugs to the various patients under treatment.
For simplicity and clarity of explanation, reference will be made below to the grouping-together of medical products but, naturally, the present invention may equally well be applied to other fields which have similar problems such as, for example, for fulfilling orders for spare parts for motor vehicles or other machines, for the grouping-together of components for the manufacture of industrial products such as, for example, electronic components, small metal parts, and the like.
Many known systems for the automated withdrawal of medical products from a store, in which the products are preferably stored in individual doses, provide for the selection of all of the product doses which make up the individual orders and for their delivery in groups at the output by depositing them in cases, boxes, trays, bags or other similar containers, each of which corresponds to a particular order which represents, for example, the prescription for the daily administration of drugs to a specific patient.
These known systems have several disadvantages, amongst which the most obvious is the need to provide a sufficient number of containers into which the automated withdrawal and delivery system can discharge the various products which make up the various orders. This method of operation leads to a complex organization, which can usually be managed only manually, if the containers, for example, the cases or boxes, have to be reused. In fact, once the prescribed drugs have been administered to the patients, the empty containers have to be collected from each patient and returned to the automated withdrawal and delivery system. If, on the other hand, disposable containers, for example, paper or plastics envelopes or bags, are used, the overall running cost of the automated system may become particularly high because of the large number of disposable containers which have to be provided and used purely to keep the products physically grouped together. In this connection, it will suffice to consider the large numbers of orders for the administration of medical products which an automated system of the type indicated above is required to fulfill daily, even in small hospital establishments.
The above-mentioned disadvantage is aggravated in situations in which the individual prescriptions for drugs or medical products involve a small number of products in individual doses. Clearly, the burden of the management of the empty containers, or the cost of the disposable containers, is less if the larger is the number of products included in each individual order and grouped together in each individual container. In general, however, and in particular for the daily administration of pharmaceutical and medical products to patients in hospital establishments, it is possible to increase the number of products to be grouped together for each individual order only at the expense of the efficacy and overall usefulness of the automated system for the withdrawal and delivery of products for the final purposes for which it is intended.
There is a risk that the disadvantages indicated above will greatly limit the spread of automated systems for the management or orders for medical prescriptions, which could otherwise contribute enormously to the reduction of the management costs of hospital establishments, increasing their overall efficiency, enabling the personnel employed in the manual selection and distribution of drugs and of medical products in general to be assigned to more skilled activities.
The object of the present invention is therefore to overcome the disadvantages described above by providing a device and a method for the grouping-together of articles, which device and method are simple, economical and efficient, particularly but not exclusively when used for grouping together drugs and medical products to be distributed within automated systems used in hospital establishments.